


Three Seed

by monaghana



Category: Naruto
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, F/F, F/M, Hate to Love, M/M, Mental Instability, Multi, Personal Growth, Revenge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 00:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5949282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monaghana/pseuds/monaghana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Torn by the death of their teacher, Team Asuma is riveted with grief, and a burning hatred that threatens to see the Zombi Combi sent to Hell.  Shikamaru has plans of retribution that are implemented quickly without failure -- but his closure does not rest in peace with everyone.  Chouji is content with the end Shikamaru has brought, but Ino’s feelings remain unclear...</p>
<p>Team Asuma struggles to keep their bond together as the inseparable Ino-Shika-Cho formation, but perhaps the wild swings of Hidan's scythe have torn them apart for good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is a look into the future...a very FAR future. I want to explain it so much, but I feel as if it'll spoil the entire story. Please bear with me as the story continues-- everything will make sense in the end!

As streams of blue drip from behind vast clouds, he runs.

Saturated concrete steams with each hit of his shoes, only to dissipate and soak themselves the moment his foot is gone.  He runs faster.  Streetlamps fuzz through his passing vision, wooden-orange radiance lost when he looks down and down again.   The trail he starts to follow only thickens.  Little lights are overexposed and they highlight skid marks on the ground where red liquid is lulled into permanence.

They lead him to a door, where it seems someone has been before, and he stops running to hold up his fists in a sneak attack.  Inside is lukewarm, air hovering where the ceiling is worn, puddles of sky placid as they lay drowning on the floor.  Glossy reflections of a dull luminosity glisten in the water, rippling the moment before he sets his foot into it.  His hand leaves its position to poke at the blurred air, grasping at swinging metal beads and tugging for a final click.  If the light should still be on, he doesn’t know.

A gloom steps from the sudden dark and moves over his ear, cursing him and all that he has tried to stand for.  He strives to disable the muscles and bones so that they won’t walk on their own…but he’s hungry and wild for destruction, even if it means it’s his own. 

Nothing is behind him like before and his minds shifts with his head to locate the source of the somber secrets that had just been there moments ago.  He shakes all over but his job is not done.  If it ever will be, he will still not be satisfied, even if the world passes through him and he begins to live without it.  What can the Earth give him that it has not already taken from him? 

Pushed to the ground, his blood explores the cloudy cement as a dead, hearty laughter bellows from the grip that holds him down.  There is ringing that goes  deep deep deep .

All he thinks about is why the skin ripping his hair back feels so ordinary.  There are things that grow inside the shadow, things he doesn’t like — deceased and ornery. Yet the skin is alive and it’s moving.

Ready to snare memories and thoughts that he has never felt willing to share, he breaks off the pavement and runs again, crashing into the square corner of the wall.  The sleekness of the fine rock is damp and so is he, graceless drops slipping off of his nose to meet their fate as they fall away.  Cryptic fingers pull him by the throat to slam him back, over and over until he is blank.  The white noise drowns out and his hands stop fighting at the ones clutched so tightly around his neck.  This is not his defeat. 

This is his time to think.


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shikamaru grieves for Asuma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cosmos hint comes in handy!

The ice sweated underneath his fingertips.  It melted away easily, turning into chilled drops of water as he brushed his hand across the marble it chose to frost over that night.  Or, perhaps there was no choice for it.  Ice cannot make decisions; it can only go along with what the weather rules.  It cannot choose to melt or further freeze.  It simply  _ does _ .  

He pondered this.  What is choice?  There is a solid definition for it —  _ the power or right to choose; option _ .  But he had found over time that the dictionary does not always include everything.  It does not answer which choice is the right one, or how to find it. 

So it seemed; a person who lives by the book is either someone who has it figured out, or someone who doesn’t have it figured out at all. 

Mud began to harden onto his knees.  He had been kneeling in the drying dirt for so long that he was unsure as to whether or not he’d be able to stand up and walk away — whether it was due to sentiments or simple physical inability, he didn’t bother himself with.  His hands were cold, yet he kept them out in the raw air.  There was only one thing he is truly feeling, and that thing was  **numb** .

Of course, that was a lie, as he was feeling many things; bitter, upset, enraged, those only being primary examples.  He did not know about these emotions yet, which were buried inside his stomach and within his heart.  However, like  most things, they would be unearthed.  And, like  all things, they had to be confronted.  Shelter is important when in a storm, but when the storm passes, it is important to clean up what it has left behind, no matter if it be debris, lawn chairs, or people.

The fine engravings upon the stone in from of him peered fixedly at the open sky, smooth stone indifferent to the floral party laid upon it.   _ She _ had come earlier – hands full of sweet peas and tulips – to mourn, and while he had not been there with her, he could tell of the visit.  Her presence lingered on the spears of grass around him, cosmos sweetly sleeping around the gravestone.  She had wept here – perhaps that was why the ground is so damp.  Tears are the same as the rain; just as a person may weep, the clouds may as well. 

If he thought about it, he could find similarities between clouds and humans.  They traveled and nudged one another, swarming where the sun is brightest and darkening when they were upset.  Though the thought of a fog in the air having emotions was foolish, he held onto the idea with faint, weak hands.  If there were people in the sky - those who had left for better things - then there were people in the clouds; and if the one he was grieving over was anywhere good at all, it was in those clouds.

Once again, his hand swept over the stone; the sad water flicking away in leaps and drops over the edge to drown on the soil.  His fingers felt the carved symbols, giving mind to each and every character evenly.  He traced the last piece of their name and his hand lingered for only a moment longer before it fell back to his side.  As his head goes to look back at the base of the grave in front of him, a tear fell from the Heavens and his eyes widened in dull surprise.  They fell down soft as his head leaned back to face the dark welkin, and fell down ever harder as time began to pass.  His eyes closed and he inhaled, breathing in the wet gloom.  This was the second time it had rained that day. 

Sounds of soggy footsteps and patters of pear-drop water on soaked clothes perked his ears, though he did not turn to see who was there.  Not many others would have tried to fetch him here, even less so in the downpour.  Bringing his head forward to hang down, he rose, one hand on each knee as his back straightened to stand, tall and tired.  His eyes flickered forward again to the headstone. 

“He was a good man.”

There was no response to the figure, not for a moment or two.  Some part of the addressed did not want to move out of the quiet rain.  Perchance it was out of a sense of duty that he felt compelled to stay — if he could not protect the deceased when they lived, then surely he could try to protect them in their death.  Could he do that, by just standing there?  Did his presence make the afterlife safer?   There was no way he could tell, but that could not prevent him from wondering, even if he wondered for only a moment.

_ He was good man… _

If that wasn’t the raw truth, then the world itself was a lie.   

**Author's Note:**

> Flowers will be a large reference within this work-- I'll give you a cheat and let you know that cosmos will always refer to Ino.


End file.
